Stranger
by Mystic83
Summary: In all her pain and suffering, she has come to understand every single person around her. A stranger in a place she used to call home, she can see what no one else can.


They think that I'm a part of them.

But I'm not.

The things that happened to me on Caprica… I'm different now. Changed.

I'm quieter and less willing to argue about the stupid, little things. I do my rounds at the triad tables. I still win. But the glee is gone. I haven't seen the brig since I got back. I haven't even tried. It took them two days to find me a functioning Viper now that my knee is allowing me to fly. It didn't even matter. The sky doesn't hold the same peace that it used to.

I'm an outsider stuck on the inside.

They don't realize that they're all like me. No one is a part of this.

They all have their secrets. Secret looks. Secret longings. Secret heartbreaks. Secret opinions.

They don't look the same from the inside as they do from the outside.

As an outsider, I'm the only one that can tell.

Cally's still stuck in the brig. I went to visit her yesterday and within seconds I could feel her anger. Something happened to her on Kobol that she won't admit to. Something that drove her to become a murderer.

The way she speaks about Crashdown. It's laced with both respect and loathing. She liked him. Liked the way he didn't change when the world ended. And yet she hates him. Hates the way that he changed so much when the world ended.

Cally doesn't have that much left in the way of friends. Socinus died on Kobol. Seelix won't talk to anyone. Jammer won't shut up. And the Chief? He can't seem to look her in the eye these days.

Galen Tyrol is a strong man. He's put up with a lot. But Cally's shooting of Galactica's first Cylon infiltrator has set him over the edge. Now he stares at everyone for a second too long. He doesn't know I know what he's doing. The familiar search for whether you can trust a person or not. The stare the seems to strip everything a person is down to the bare essentials. People judge him. They give him dirty looks when he holds their eyes too long, myself included.

The funny thing is I do it, too.

It's hard to trust these days. It's hard to do anything.

The changes are what make it hard.

The change that hurts the most was the one thing I never expected.

My nuggets aren't scared of me anymore. They can tell that I've been damaged.

Hot Dog got thrown up to full pilot status while I was gone. The kid was barely passing each lesson I gave only weeks ago. But I guess he was the kind of natural flyer that only war time situations could bring out.

He's been assigned to me as my wingman.

This scares me.

Not because I'm afraid he won't have my back.

No. I'm afraid that I won't have his. I've been out of practice for too long. My instincts are off. I can't figure out the right pressures for the thrust half the time.

Lee's been flying with Bear lately. He says that she's only been flying for a few months now and he's concerned that she won't be able to take the pressures of the sky.

I say that he should be watching me more closely if he really claims to love me. I almost died the last time we were in the air because I panicked and couldn't remember which way I was supposed to turn. Hot Dog didn't say a word when we landed. I think he's scared to admit that I'm not the same Starbuck everyone wants me to be.

The only person who doesn't seem to care about my time on Caprica is the Old Man, surprisingly. He has a lot of issues to work through. The Fleet is a mess. The wounds that Tigh caused are barely repairable.

It's funny. The Old Man is in the same predicament I am. An outside looking in at a mess he didn't make. A mess he wasn't there to see as it began.

He doesn't want to be here.

Oh, he'd never admit that to a soul. But I can tell.

His mind has finally caught up to his body in years. He hesitates. He follows his emotions when making decisions. And he holds a grudge.

No one has commented on his behavior, but boy, can he hold a grudge.

Helo hasn't been able to get a second sleep since we returned to Galactica. There are meetings, debriefings, planning sessions, theorizing sessions, planning of future theorizing sessions. Each one always has something to do with his time on Caprica. Each one requires him to rise out of his bunk after laying there just long enough to begin to fall asleep. I think we're all getting tired of having to summon him to this conference room or that office. Half the time he doesn't even wait for us to say anything. He just nods and stumbles out the door.

He's been flying a Raptor now with Racetrack. She's learned to be a good pilot. No one knows her motivation for the switch from ECO to pilot.

No one except me, that is.

She's scared to death. She partially blames herself for the Old Man getting shot. She was with Boomer in that Basestar. She should have known something was wrong. She was standing next to Sharon when she pulled out the gun and fired. She should have tried to stop it.

And she's on a one-way path to redemption. Screw anyone who gets in her way.

Trust me. I would know. Been doing it for years.

She holds on to the fact that there's one thing she can help fix. One person who she can help heal. That's why she requested the slight demotion down to Raptor pilot.

I caught her and Helo fraking up against the bunkroom wall two days ago. She wants to prove to herself that he can be redeemed. And he wants to prove to himself that one can still be human even if you love a machine.

When I saw them, I just shut the door and decided to go help out in the hangar bay instead of taking my nap. Usually this is the type of thing that would spread around among the pilots like wildfire. Two of Boomer's old ECOs in such a compromising position.

But these days everyone seems to be more casual in their affections.

The reality of it being the end of the world is setting in. People want to prove they're still alive.

Having seen what I've seen, I want to punch them all. They have it easy. Every single soul.

Life on Galactica is like a dream.

President Roslin has ordered me to Colonial One in the morning.

She hasn't spoken to me since we returned from Kobol. Like a tool that's lost its usefulness, she's discarded me.

I went to Caprica. I got her Arrow. I came back tainted.

Roslin has hardened to everyone. People blame it on the time she spent in the brig. According to those that were here, she had it hard at first because she couldn't get the drug she needed to push death away. I've been addicted to many things in my life. I can understand the withdrawal and the cravings.

What I can't understand is why no one sees the real reason she's become so distant.

The woman is dying. She finally sees how much she is needed now that her body is slowly failing, fading into oblivion. The hardness comes because she has no one. She will have no one in the end.

Nothing can change that.

I don't see Billy hanging around Galactica anymore to talk with Dee. He spends all his time with the President. Says that she needs his support now that things are back to normal.

I know he's young, but I want to punch him in the face every time he uses that stupid phrase.

Back to normal.

Things will never be back to normal.

There's proof of that about two inches away from my navel.

Sometimes when I'm talking with Lee, my hand reaches up to unconsciously rub that second scar through the layers of clothing I have on. I think it's my quiet plea for him to notice.

I constantly bear my scar to the world. I want people to ask me what it is just so I can deny them knowledge. I want to prove to them that I am the same. I still won't let you in.

I want Lee to ask me the most, though. I think if he did, I might actually tell him.

Maybe then he'll tell me why he washes his hands every hour. He thinks no one notices him at the sinks, scrubbing until the skin turns pink.

I notice.

I notice because I'm there beside him scrubbing where the IV went into my hand almost as often. I wish I could scrub where I actually feel dirty. But it's hard to reach that far inside of you.

I'm still scared to death of the drugs the Cylons put into my system.

I'm still scared to death that they've done something to me that I don't know about.

I won't see Doctor Cottle. Won't let him come near me. I'm functioning just fine without his gruff questions and concerns. I let him touch my knee just so I could be given the all-clear to fly again. But that's it.

Anything closer and I won't be able to lie my way out of it.

They think I'm brave. They think that my stealing the Raider to give us a concrete way to find Earth was selfless and heroic.

A hero, they call me. If they only knew.

I took that Raider because I didn't have anything to lose. I took that Raider so that Roslin wouldn't ask someone else to do it. I took that Raider because I wanted to see if it could be done. I took that Raider because I was selfish and I wanted to hear my father again.

Everyone calls me brave. Selfless. Strong-willed. Powerful. Tough. Courageous.

Everyone is an idiot.

I am none of those things.

They think I'm the backbone of this Fleet. I'm the thing that holds it together.

I think they're blind.

You ask me? Dualla. She's the real backbone.

She defies orders just as often as I do. She's just as strong as I am. Can handle hardship with the best of them. She does the things that no one else has the heart or the courage to do.

So she can't fly a Viper? That doesn't make her weak.

The girl listens to pilots die every day. She hears their final cries of anguish as they're shot. She doesn't break a sweat when she has to deliver the tough-to-hear orders. She doesn't cry when she has to tell someone that the person they've known for years has just been blown out of the sky.

She's strong and stable. Everything I'm not.

And she's not afraid to love.

Sometimes I think that she should be the one teaching the nuggets. Maybe then they wouldn't die so quickly.

I sit here every night, listening to the cold stillness that fills this room. I consider all the things that people in the Fleet are hiding from one another.

Love. Hatred. Fear.

Those are the main three.

Those are the ones that are so hard to admit to.

I think about the complexities that are slowly forming around me. I get antsy at night when I can't figure everyone out. When I can't work out all the things they are not saying and all the things they are not doing.

That's probably why I end up here.

Likes I said, it's quiet.

The only person I haven't mentioned yet is Lee.

…

I don't want to talk about Lee.

My knuckles are starting to heal. I scraped them pretty bad on Caprica, and I haven't given them time to heal. The pain reminds me that under all the changes, I'm still human.

I don't know when this shifted. But I remember I used to frak to prove that I was alive. Now the pain is all I crave.

Pain is life.

Tomorrow is going to be hard. A meeting with the President. My turn at the CAP with Hot Dog. A debriefing with Helo. A triad game I promised the nuggets I would be at. A shift on Viper maintenance to cover for the slack caused by Cally's absence for the next fourteen days. An appointment with Doc Cottle that I know I'll never make it to.

In other words, pretend to not care that I'm no longer important to the Fleet. Pretend to not care that I'm liable to fly myself straight to my death. Pretend to not care that Helo is never going to be someone I can call my friend again. Pretend to not care that I don't have what it takes anymore to keep the nuggets from dying. Pretend not to care that I am working so hard to cover for a shattered, little girl who only wants her life to go back to what it was. Pretend to not care that this scar on my stomach hurts more each day.

Pretending.

The natural state of being for an outsider looking in.

I'm a stranger in my own home. I appear all right on the outside. Something is dangerously wrong on the inside. I'm not whole. Something's gone and there's no way to get it back.

I go through the motions to give others hope.

Only I know the truth. There's no hope.

There's only the promise of nothingness when things finally get too hard.

I look forward to my death now. I'm not scared. I'm ready.

And I know it's coming.

Soon.

The gods have forgotten their child.

I have forgotten the gods.

No one notices that change in me.

I'm a casualty of time. A stranger in a world of strangers. No one knows me. I know everyone.

I long to rest. I long to sleep. For the pain to fade away.

Until then, I'll do my part. I'll be all the things they need me to be. I'll be unchanged. I'll push forward with a fake smirk on my face and words that can make you bleed. I'll be the tough pilot who is constantly lost but knows where she is at all times. I'll be the friend who will judge you with her words but won't question you in her heart. I'll be strong.

It's a lie.

But it's what they need.

"Kara?"

I look up at the corner of the mirror and see Lee's face reflected back as he hangs in the doorway of the head. He looks tired.

"Are you up for some triad?"

I lick my lips and nod, sliding gently off the counter. "Sure."


End file.
